In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I am profiling one Asian or Pacific Islander MP for every day of the month of May. Today’s case is Consuelo R. “Connie” Vannausdle, a 31-year-old Filipino-American woman who disappeared from Lacey, Washington on April 25, 1993.
She may have been pregnant at the time of her disappearance, and her husband Mark said she was depressed and possibly suicidal, but the police doubt Mark’s claims.
Foul play is suspected in Consuelo’s disappearance, and Mark seems to be the prime suspect. He claimed she simply walked out on him and their two kids. He never reported her missing; her sister in California finally did in July, over two months after she was last seen.
In addition, Mark is definitely a violent man; in 2002, he shot a cab driver (not fatally) and stole the person’s cab. He pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and first-degree robbery and got a twenty-year sentence. In 2004, prison officials found steroids and an “escape kit” in his cell. Lovely man.
The coroner issued a death certificate for Consuelo in 2008. I hope their children were looked after by someone responsible.
(An aside: I find it interesting that “Consuelo” is a woman’s name, because almost all female names in Spanish end with A. In fact, Consuelo is the only one I can think of that ends with an O. You’d think it would be Consuela instead, but Consuelo is the norm. Shrug.)
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